LET’S TALK ABOUT… CRYPTOCURRENCY MINERS

LET’S TALK ABOUT… CRYPTOCURRENCY MINERS

uTorrent recently made headlines for bundling cryptocurrency-mining junkware. Out of all the junkware programs bundled with installers, cryptocurrency-miners like Epic Scale are some of the worst.

Modern malware makes money by using this technique to mine Bitcoin, too. Even if you don’t care about most junkware at all, cryptocurrency-mining software is something you really don’t want on your computer.

CRYPTOCURRENCY 101

You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency. It’s a digital currency, and new units of currency are generated by “mining.” This is a computationally intensive task, and it requires a lot of processing power. Essentially, the computer is rewarded for solving difficult math problems. This processing power is used to verify transactions, so all that number-crunching is required for the cryptocurrency to work. That’s an extremely basic explanation — read our in-depth explanation of Bitcoin for more details.

Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency. The Epic Scale junkware bundled with uTorrent’s installer doesn’t attempt to mine Bitcoin — it attempts to mine Litecoin, which was inspired by and is very similar to Bitcoin.

Suggested Cryptocurrency Software

MINING ACTUALLY COSTS YOU MONEY

Mining programs tap into your computer’s hardware resources and put them to work mining Bitcoin, Litecoin, or another type of cryptocurrency. And no, even if your hardware is used to generate money for them, you don’t get any of it. They get all the money from putting your hardware to work.

Worse yet, your desktop computer or laptop at home just isn’t powerful enough to profitably mine Bitcoin, Litecoin, or other cryptocurrencies. Doing this profitably requires specialized mining rigs with specialized hardware and cheap electricity. So, even if you put your computer to work mining Bitcoin for your own profit, you’d actually lose money. You’d run up your power bill as your computer draws more power, and you’d make back less than it would cost you in power.

Suggested Hardware for Cryptocurrency Mining

HEAT AND PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS

This is a bad deal so far. It would be better if you just paid a company like Epic Scale a few dollars and they avoided running up your electric bill — you’d save money.

But the problem isn’t just a financial one. These types of software kick in when your computer is at a low-power state, putting those idle resources to work. So, instead of using a small amount of power and running cool, your computer will run full-blast when you’re not using it, fans kicking into high gear to dissipate all that heat. If the software isn’t programmed properly — or if it’s just too greedy — it may continue running even while you’re using your computer, slowing tasks down and ensuring your computer is running at full tilt all the time. Too much heat can actually cause damage, especially if your hardware is already flaky or if your computer is packed with dust and isn’t properly ventilated.

Really, we can’t stress it enough — there is no advantage to you in running a program like Epic Scale. You get absolutely nothing from it. Epic Scale gets everything, and you have to deal with all the problems.

SO HOW IS IT JUSTIFIED?

BitTorrent argues Epic Scale is completely justified in abusing your hardware because you agreed to it. If you clicked through the uTorrent installer and accidentally agreed to the Epic Scale offer because it was disgused to look like a legitimate license screen, it’s only your own fault for choosing to use Epic Scale. That’s the argument from BitTorrent, Inc. If you’re not a fan of it, try one of these uTorrent alternatives (or stick with an older version of uTorrent) and send a message. As a bonus, you can avoid all the junk they’ll try to slip onto your computer in the future.

For their part, Epic Scale has a nice-sounding explanation of the issue on their website. They argue that they just want to “benefit high-impact charities” and “advance research science by providing affordable high-performance computation.” They say they “started with cryptocurrency mining as a way to advance the first mission.” In other words, for all their talk, they’re just mining cryptocurrency the same way that malware is doing right now, except in their case you have to agree to it first.

Ultimately, this argument is absurd. People would be better off donating to charities than running up their electricity bills, and a network of underpowered home computers with installer junkware on them isn’t the best way to provide “affordable high-performance computation” for research science. Their statement sounds nice, but their methods are absurd and a bit too similar to how criminals profit off of malware. The only difference is a dense EULA disguised in a software installer and a nice-sounding statement about donating the proceeds to charity. So it comes down to choice, they do give you one, unlike the malware, but it’s not a choice we recommend.

DONATE DIRECTLY TO CHARITY AND SKIP THE MIDDLEMAN

No, we’re not anti-charity. Do you want to support charities? Then donate directly to them. Five dollars donated directly to a charity every month is better than $5 extra spent on your electricity bill with the charity only getting a fraction of that.

In my personal opinion, is extremely bad. Even if you’re used to your Windows PC being packed with toolbars, pop-ups, and other garbage, even you might think something is wrong if your computer’s fans are going full-blast all the time and it’s acting like a space heater. The Windows software ecosystem is sick, and this is how companies like BitTorrent, Inc. make their money. Yes, almost everyone is doing it — but no, it’s still not acceptable.

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LET'S TALK ABOUT... WINDOWS 10 FALL CREATORS UPDATE

LET'S TALK ABOUT... WINDOWS 10 FALL CREATORS UPDATE

Download Official ISO and related Microsoft Tools

Version 1709 (Fall Creators Update)
The fifth stable release of Windows 10, officially branded as the Fall Creators Update or version 1709 and codenamed "Redstone 3" (RS3), was released on October 17, 2017.

It introduces a new feature known as "My People", where shortcuts to "important" contacts can be displayed on the taskbar. Notifications involving these contacts appear above their respective pictures, and users can communicate with the contact via either Skype, e-mail, or text messaging (integrating with Android and Windows 10 Mobile devices). Support for additional services, including Xbox, Skype for Business, and third-party integration, are to be added in the future. Files can also be dragged directly to the contact's picture to share them. My People was originally announced for Creators Update, but was ultimately held over to the next release, and made its first public appearance in Build 16184 in late April 2017.

It also introduces a new security feature known as "controlled folder access", which allows application access to defined folders to be restricted to specified software. This feature is designed mainly to defend against file-encrypting ransomware.

Features removed on version 1703 and 1709
Windows Update will no longer postpone the download of certain critical updates if the device is connected to a network that was designated by the user as being "metered". Although meant to prevent the updates from utilizing data allotments, this behavior had been used as a workaround by users to defy the requirement for all updates to be automatically downloaded.

Devices containing an Intel Atom "Clover Trail" system-on-chip are incompatible with Version 1703, and cannot be upgraded to this version of Windows 10.

Server Message Block version 1 (SMB1) is disabled by default on version 1709. The Home and the Pro editions only disable the SMB1 server, but retain the SMB1 client, so they can connect to SMB1 network shares. The Enterprise and the Education editions disable the SMB1 entirely. This version of the 30-years-old protocol gained notoriety in the WannaCry ransomware attack, although Microsoft has been discouraging its use even before.

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LET’S TALK ABOUT - DEEP WEB

LET’S TALK ABOUT - DEEP WEB

DISCLAIMER: this information is a public and for educational purposes, I don't have any knowledge on how to use it and more technical aspects as software and and hardware. If you are looking for that, you are on the wrong place.

MAIN CONCEPT AND WHAT IS

The deep web, invisible web, or hidden web are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard search engines for any reason. The content is hidden behind HTML forms. The opposite term to the deep web is the surface web, which is accessible to anyone using the Internet. The deep web includes many very common uses such as web mail and online banking but it also includes services that users must pay for, and which is protected by a paywall, such as video on demand, some online magazines and newspapers, and many more.

BASIC CONCEPT

The first conflation of the terms "deep web" and "dark web" came about in 2009 when the deep web search terminology was discussed alongside illegal activities taking place on the Freenet darknet.

Since then, the use in the Silk Road's media reporting, many people and media outlets, have taken to using Deep Web synonymously with the dark web or darknet, a comparison many reject as inaccurate and consequently is an ongoing source of confusion. Wired reporters Kim Zetter and Andy Greenberg recommend the terms be used in distinct fashions. While the deep web is reference to any site that cannot be accessed through a traditional search engine, the dark web is a small portion of the deep web that has been intentionally hidden and is inaccessible through standard browsers and methods.

SIZE

In the year 2001, Michael K. Bergman said how searching on the Internet can be compared to dragging a net across the surface of the ocean: a great deal may be caught in the net, but there is a wealth of information that is deep and therefore missed. Most of the web's information is buried far down on sites, and standard search engines do not find it. Traditional search engines cannot see or retrieve content in the deep web. The portion of the web that is indexed by standard search engines is known as the surface web. As of 2001, the deep web was several orders of magnitude larger than the surface web. An analogy of an iceberg used by Denis Shestakov represents the division between surface web and deep web respectively:

• It is impossible to measure, and harsh to put estimates on the size of the deep web because the majority of the information is hidden or locked inside databases. Early estimates suggested that the deep web is 400 to 550 times larger than the surface web. However, since more information and sites are always being added, it can be assumed that the deep web is growing exponentially at a rate that cannot be quantified.
• Estimates based on extrapolations from a study done at University of California, Berkeley in 2001 speculate that the deep web consists of about 7.5 petabytes. More accurate estimates are available for the number of resources in the deep web: research of He et al. detected around 300,000 deep web sites in the entire web in 2004, and, according to Shestakov, around 14,000 deep web sites existed in the Russian part of the Web in 2006.

NON-INDEXED CONTENT

It would be a site that's possibly reasonably designed, but they didn't bother to register it with any of the search engines. So, no one can find them! You're hidden. I call that the invisible Web.

CONTENT TYPES

Methods which prevent web pages from being indexed by traditional search engines may be categorized as one or more of the following:

1. Contextual Web: pages with content varying for different access contexts (e.g., ranges of client IP addresses or previous navigation sequence).

2. Dynamic content: dynamic pages which are returned in response to a submitted query or accessed only through a form, especially if open-domain input elements (such as text fields) are used; such fields are hard to navigate without domain knowledge.

3. Limited access content: sites that limit access to their pages in a technical way (e.g., using the Robots Exclusion Standard or CAPTCHAs, or no-store directive which prohibit search engines from browsing them and creating cached copies).

4. Non-HTML/text content: textual content encoded in multimedia (image or video) files or specific file formats not handled by search engines.

5. Private Web: sites that require registration and login (password-protected resources).

6. Scripted content: pages that are only accessible through links produced by JavaScript as well as content dynamically downloaded from Web servers via Flash or Ajax solutions.

7. Software: certain content is intentionally hidden from the regular Internet, accessible only with special software, such as Tor, I2P, or other darknet software. For example, Tor allows users to access websites using the .onion server address anonymously, hiding their IP address.

8. Unlinked content: pages which are not linked to by other pages, which may prevent web crawling programs from accessing the content. This content is referred to as pages without backlinks (also known as inlinks). Also, search engines do not always detect all backlinks from searched web pages.

9. Web archives: Web archival services such as the Wayback Machine enable users to see archived versions of web pages across time, including websites which have become inaccessible, and are not indexed by search engines such as Google.

INDEXING METHODS

While it is not always possible to directly discover a specific web server's content so that it may be indexed, a site potentially can be accessed indirectly (due to computer vulnerabilities).

To discover content on the web, search engines use web crawlers that follow hyperlinks through known protocol virtual port numbers. This technique is ideal for discovering content on the surface web but is often ineffective at finding deep web content. For example, these crawlers do not attempt to find dynamic pages that are the result of database queries due to the indeterminate number of queries that are possible. It has been noted that this can be (partially) overcome by providing links to query results, but this could unintentionally inflate the popularity for a member of the deep web.

DeepPeep, Intute, Deep Web Technologies, Scirus, and Ahmia.fi are a few search engines that have accessed the deep web. Intute ran out of funding and is now a temporary static archive as of July 2011. Scirus retired near the end of January 2013.

Researchers have been exploring how the deep web can be crawled in an automatic fashion, including content that can be accessed only by special software such as Tor. In 2001, Sriram Raghavan and Hector Garcia-Molina (Stanford Computer Science Department, Stanford University) presented an architectural model for a hidden-Web crawler that used key terms provided by users or collected from the query interfaces to query a Web form and crawl the Deep Web content. Alexandros Ntoulas, Petros Zerfos, and Junghoo Cho of UCLA created a hidden-Web crawler that automatically generated meaningful queries to issue against search forms. Several form query languages (e.g., DEQUEL) have been proposed that, besides issuing a query, also allow extraction of structured data from result pages. Another effort is DeepPeep, a project of the University of Utah sponsored by the National Science Foundation, which gathered hidden-web sources (web forms) in different domains based on novel focused crawler techniques.

Commercial search engines have begun exploring alternative methods to crawl the deep web. The Sitemap Protocol (first developed, and introduced by Google in 2005) and mod oai are mechanisms that allow search engines and other interested parties to discover deep web resources on particular web servers. Both mechanisms allow web servers to advertise the URLs that are accessible on them, thereby allowing automatic discovery of resources that are not directly linked to the surface web. Google's deep web surfacing system computes submissions for each HTML form and adds the resulting HTML pages into the Google search engine index. The surfaced results account for a thousand queries per second to deep web content. In this system, the pre-computation of submissions is done using three algorithms:

o    Selecting input values for text search inputs that accept keywords,

o    Identifying inputs which accept only values of a specific type (e.g., date), and

o    Selecting a small number of input combinations that generate urls suitable for inclusion into the web search index.

In 2008, to facilitate users of Tor hidden services in their access and search of a hidden .onion suffix, Aaron Swartz designed Tor2web—a proxy application able to provide access by means of common web browsers. Using this application, deep web links appear as a random string of letters followed by the .onion TLD.

DISCLAIMER: this information is a public and for educational purposes, I don't have any knowledge on how to use it and more technical aspects as software and and hardware. If you are looking for that, you are on the wrong place.



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